1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate to the field of curing imprinted materials, and more particularly, to the use of radio frequency and microwave radiation in conjunction with convective thermal heating to expedite the curing of an imprinted material.
2. Description of Related Art
Imprinting is the technique by which a preset pattern is embossed or imprinted into another material, thereby creating a negative pattern on the material. Existing techniques for imprinting features onto materials and the subsequent curing of these imprinted materials by utilizing high temperature convective heating ovens are subject to several drawbacks.
For example, the use of high temperature convective heating requires a significant amount of energy to produce the required high temperatures to cure the imprinted material. Further, the cure time for the imprinted material is very long. Due to the large amount of energy required and the lengthy cure times, the cost to cure imprinted materials is relatively high.
Moreover, the high temperatures required to cure imprinted materials often leads to feature “washout” due to the low viscosity of the imprinted material at high temperatures. The term washout refers to the dilution of features (e.g. angles, depth, etc.) that occurs when an imprinted material is held at particular temperature ranges for extended periods of time. This is common in oven-based high temperature global curing in which imprinted materials are cured by being subjected to high temperatures for relatively long periods of time.
Washout is particularly problematic for imprinted materials that require the imprinting of connectivity features for such applications as, for example, integrated circuits. These applications require stringent tolerances to ensure that required signal propagation standards are maintained in the finished integrated circuit.